Africa

Politics in South Africa

Zille chiller

HELEN ZILLE, the leader of the Democratic Alliance (DA), South Africa’s main opposition party, was invited to speak in Johannesburg on October 17th about her party’s chances at elections expected in April or May. Her hosts, the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, both think-tanks, were expecting a speech on “The 2014 Elections: Policy and Prospects”. Instead Ms Zille offered a thorough-going analysis of her opponents in the ruling African National Congress (ANC). Her speech was untitled but it might have been called: “Can the ANC reform?” She made a persuasive case that it cannot.

The question is crucial. The ANC will win next year’s elections. Ms Zille doesn’t pretend otherwise: the DA’s target is to raise its share of the vote from 17% in 2009 to 30% in 2014. Yet the country the ANC has governed for almost two decades is hardly content. Industry is beset by strikes. Violent protests over poor public services are frequent. Unemployment is a depressing 37% of the workforce once those who have given up searching for work are included in the count. GDP growth has been weaker than in other countries at a similar stage of economic development. If the ANC can make necessary reforms, the outlook for South Africa could be much brighter. If it cannot, the country’s present malaise will deepen.

Ms Zille took an analysis by one of her hosts, Frans Cronje of the SAIRR, as her starting point. Plenty of people think the ANC is too far gone (too corrupt; too addled with weird ideologies; too riven with factions) to fix South Africa. But Mr Cronje recalls that people said similar things in the 1980s about the National Party. Yet its progressive wing won the party’s internal battle against conservatives who believed apartheid could be sustained with brute force. Mr Cronje sees a parallel in the battle within the present-day ANC between those who favour market-friendly reforms and those who think more of the same state-led policies will somehow work. There is a scenario, reckons Mr Cronje, in which the ANC can put things right.

Ms Zille agreed there will be a “realignment” of politics in South Africa but disagreed that the ANC could ever be behind it. No faction that can now save the ANC from itself exists, she said. When in 2008 some ANC politicians broke away to form a new party, the Congress of the People (known as COPE), many thought it would replace the DA as the main opposition. It captured a respectable 7% of the votes cast in elections in 2009 but is now beset by internal power struggles and has lost its way. The formation of COPE denuded the reform-minded group within the ANC, said Ms Zille. A lesson to anyone else thinking of launching a challenge is that “it’s cold outside”.

The recent launch of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), a party of the populist left, is more bad news for would-be ANC reformers, said Ms Zille. Leftists in the ANC are anxious about leaking support to the EFF and so are even more unwilling to agree to any reforms. Their hackles have already been raised by the removal of Zwelinzima Vavi, a popular figure on the left, as general-secretary of COSATU, a union federation allied to the ANC. What happens to Mr Vavi is a big deal, said Ms Zille. If he is not reinstated, he may break away to form a Labour Party and offer a more credible leftist challenge than the EFF. But if he returns to COSATU, then labour reforms such as the youth wage subsidy will continue to be stymied. Either way serious economic reforms are firmly off the ANC’s agenda.

Readers' comments

South Africa’s main problem is that its majority black population has allowed itself to be deceived by the ANC into believing that the only alternative to its misrule is a return to apartheid rule, and Zille’s reported half-hearted embrace of multiracialism understandably nourishes that cruel, suicidal belief. Thus, I’m not sure if she is the solution to the country’s inexorable drift into the abyss.

Nonetheless, if any ruling party has failed as spectacularly as the ANC after two decades of solid majority rule, the case for its replacement is unanswerable, and the idea that it can be reformed in any meaningful way is ludicrous. For, to begin with, Mr Cronje’s attempt to draw a parallel between it and the National Party is misleading because it wasn’t an “internal battle” that forced change upon the apartheid regime; it was factors beyond its control, particularly the fact that direct action by (ironically) the ANC had rendered the country ungovernable and forced a rethink among foreign investors. Thus, even if the National Party were a credible model, the facts would be totally different. At any rate, there would have to be a sudden and genuine abandonment of the ANC’s arrogant sense of entitlement to power, which clearly isn’t realistic given the unquestioning support it enjoys.

Alas, as with all democratic choices, this is entirely a matter for the South Africans themselves, particularly the black majority. And if they continue to allow themselves to be fooled by the ANC, they’ll certainly deserve their fate.

It's hard to dispute such an apparently incontrovertible remark, to be sure, and other commentators have cited illiteracy (rather than "poor education") as the root cause. (I'm not sure if there's any difference between both, and insofar as they supposedly have the same constraining impact on the individual, I consider any distinction irrelevant here.)

At any rate, I have always been sceptical about this explanation because I don't believe that formal education has a lot to do with basic rationality. I was born and grew up in one of the remotest rural parts of Nigeria where entire communities literally had no idea what a classroom looked like. Yet, their decision-making processes (and by extension, the choices they made – both personal and communal) would put present-day Nigerian rulers (each with their Oxbridge/Ivy League PhDs) to shame. Indeed, although this was the era of successive military dictatorships (when there were no electoral choices to be made), I can’t imagine them repeatedly electing the same crooks who now misrule the country as we, the supposedly well-educated generation now do.

Your US analogy is interesting, though I’m not sure why “poor education” should be the problem there, given the innumerable opportunities that exist there for self-education (by which I do not necessarily mean of the formal kind). Perhaps their problem is wilful ignorance: who knows? At least, that’s what becomes evident from the Tea Party’s hate-informed, anti-Enlightenment rhetoric, and mainstream America’s apparent willingness to believe them.

My alternative explanation is that South Africans are victims of their own failure to produce a credible alternative to the ANC (if not of an unwillingness to embrace one). Zille’s party could have filled that vacuum, but is constrained by her half-hearted repudiation of apartheid (which reinforces the ANC’s self-serving fearmongering), and her inability to appeal beyond a small number of middle-class black voters. In a rather disturbing way, the obnoxious ANC Youth Wing leader, Malema, has proved that the party isn’t the invincible behemoth that we all believe it is. Imagine someone like him (either from within the ANC itself or elsewhere), but with a credible economic reform programme, and without his baleful qualities. Perhaps s/he will emerge, but my fear is that they haven’t got as long as they think to reverse their drift into the abyss.

There is a certain comparison to be made between the ANC and the National Party (NP), according to the historian Hermann Giliomee. The NP leadership, sometimes misguidedly, always acted in what they believed to be the best interest of their people (white South Africans, and Afrikaners in particular) who elected them to govern. Admittedly, this was at the disadvantage of the black majority.
Can the same be said about the ANC in government? Do they govern with the best interests of their people (the poor black masses) at heart? The evidence seems to point in the other direction. They are driven by the material interests of a small elite, mostly black. How else do you explain the self indulgent waste of taxpayers money, for instance the more than 200 million rands spent on Mr Zuma's private residence, while next door the people in the village where Mr Zuma was born live in hopeless squalor?

"ANC is too far gone (too corrupt; too addled with weird ideologies; too riven with factions) to fix South Africa. But Mr Cronje recalls that people said similar things in the 1980s about the National Party"

A weird comment, that. The National Party was always professional and competent. Its management of the economy was successful. There was little if any corruption. There were no weird ideologies. There were factions, but all parties have factions.

The ANC is an extremist organisation. The National Party was never that. The ANC is Marxist, the National Party supported free enterprise - not capitalism. The ANC is a racist anti-White party, its anthems call for the murder of "settlers". The National Party was never racist or anti-black, it advocated policies to protect whites and keep the races apart (at least until the late 1970's).

"The National Party was always professional and competent." What about The Citizen/Info scandal?

"the National Party supported free enterprise" What about all the protectionist measures they instituted?

"The National Party was never racist or anti-black" This beggars belief. Take a look at the TRC conscripts. Their policies after the late 1970s had catstrophic effects, but their policies and actions before then were terrible too.

I'm no fan of the ANC, but they learnt many of their lessons in government from the Nats, hence the situation we find ourselves in today.

I moved to South Africa in 1998, it was then a fantastic place, everyone was enthusiastic, everything was possible, so many opportunitiies, so much that needed to be done. I left South Africa in the end of last year, there is no hope for this country any longer. ANC will win next elections, then maybe 2019 they will loose to a coalition government, but it will take such government at least 10 or 15 years to turnaround. The service delivery protest will continue and spread, the labour unrest will continue and the rand will go down like a rock, property prices will continue to rise in rand value, but those who bought property and used Euro or Dollar will barely get their money back, very, very few of those who did buy since late 90's got thier money back when it was converted to the original currency

Having studied and worked in RSA over the last 10 years or so, I can readily attest to the woeful failures of the ANC's hegemonic rule since 1994. The very people they fought Aparthied for (namely the townships, the rural poor) are the ones who have benefitted least under successive ANC governments. Somehow someway the black majority need to stop re-electing the ANC. They largely do so out of a misplaced sense of loyalty to their once heroic anti-apartheid freedom fighters and a strong affection for Mandela. The only other hope is that the ANC itself fragments into a number of smaller tribal based parties. But both these hopes as mere candles in the wind.

You seem to be describing problems that are becoming common to many (if not all) developed countries. You could,for example, have lifted your post verbatim from the UK's right-wing press (and I'm not suggesting you believe most of the things they report). Which begs the obvious question: why, then, do modern Americans modern appear so uniquely ignorant?

The fact is that Americans are actually among the most informed people on the planet. And they are among the most educated too (they certainly have some of the finest institutions on earth). The problem is that there are also many among them who consciously reject science and reason, and consider any quest for knowledge as an affront to their twisted understanding of biblical teachings - which partly explains their deep-rooted contempt for the likes of Obama. You'll find them among the reported 70 million (so-called) "Christian" fundamentalists, some of whom are the supporters of racist groups like the Tea Party, who still believe that Obama's birth was some bizarre conspiracy between the hospital authorities in Hawaii and the local press, who somehow knew at the time that a new-born Kenyan (or was it Indonesian, or both?) child would be running for the White House almost five decades later, and agreed to falsify their birth records in prescient anticipation.

But it wouldn't matter much if such illogical beliefs were shared only within/among fringe groups. The problem is that there are many apparently sane and high-educated Americans who share their weird, malicious, hate-informed, fact-free beliefs. Indeed, isn't the Tea Party's Michele Bachmann herself a lawyer by training - and by all accounts, a successful one?

The problem for education in the US comes from two sources. First (chronologically) was a decision in the education establishment that it was more important to bolster children's self-esteem than to actually teach them any academic subjects. With the result that it became entirely possible for a child to attend school for years while minimal learning took place.
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Second (unrelated) was the conclusion by some that education/knowledge was bad in and of itself -- and should therefore be avoided. The latter has substantial roots in religious communities which dislike that science casts some of their beliefs into doubt; and even more dislike that science encourages people to approach ideas with at least a modicum of skepticism.
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The rest of the world has gotten the message that education is a good thing. That is, that it will help children to do better economically than their parents. Americans are less concerned that their children will live in grindingpoverty, and so can afford to disrespect education. And some of us, unfortunately, do.

much more than a political party the ANC is a war veterans association. this perception among the vast majority of South Africans draws unwavering loyalty irrespective of the political climate. the core belief is that any problem can be solved by the ANC. to think anything else is tantamount treason and this will be entrenched for at least a generation.

Ms Zille's analysis seems to me like political maneuvering. trying to reinforce rumor in the hope that it will break up the herd. it's wishful but it's unfortunately all she's got for now. it is the long game she should and probably is more focused on. the opposition will have to wait for the ANC to make a succession of catastrophic errors that will force it's core support to undergo something of a political awakening. these errors would of course hurt the country as a whole in the process and the damage seems unavoidable.

the soundest strategy to accelerate the maturation of political discourse is to fight for openness and transparency. it doesn't require a voter to be affiliated with any one party or another and it's something no politician of any stripes can be publicly seen to go against. ANC and non-ANC supporters can unite under this banner at least.

What is so sad is that that this wonderful country with so much going for it seemds to be going downhill. The ANC seem to have lost control of law and order ( many more white farmers have been murdered in South Africa than Zimbabwe) and the townships are no go areas for police who are themselves poorly led. Why can't Africa find politicians who genuinely want to do good rather than enrich themselves? I am afraid the ANC will continue to run this country for their own benefit, investment will decline, crime will increase and the poor will get poorer while the politicians get richer.

The stark lack of coherence in the most important issue facing our country of job creation, is most vividly illustrated by the contradictory messages sent out by hoping the NDP will work yet persisting with BEE - the reality of ANC policies.

Government needs to get its mind round the twin facts that private enterprise is the generator of employment and that the goal of business is to be as efficient as possible to maximise reruns on enterprise.

Business need to employ the right skills, at the right price for the market they operate in. They are fundamentally not interested in the colour, sex or age of the individuals they employ – they rather want performance, and performance sustained over time.

The enterprises that underpin the economy are those that increase the wealth of the country; those that generate wealth from overseas, be it from services performed for the global market, exports of minerals or of manufactured output. These are the bedrock that enable other industries and service companies, servicing the needs of this hard-currency generating sector, to also flourish and "round out" a balanced economy.

The mining sector has been crucified; we missed out on the mining booms of the last decade that enabled the more prescient Australians to become rich, whilst we followed a muddle-headed, wishful-thinking BEE strategy, failing to grasp the fundamental principle that the way to generate more jobs is by maximising efficiencies; and that this will in turn then lead to higher investment and more jobs.

Job creation is not just a South African problem; it is rather a global issue made more pressing by the twin issues of a gut-wrenching increase in population in the developing world of four billion in little more than a generation, and technological advances taking us into a post-industrial age. All countries are battling, but those who are ahead of the pack are those that have focussed on education and removing all red tape, protocols and Government wishful thinking social-engineering policies that impede employment and make industry in those countries uncompetitive globally.

If we want to succeed, if we want job creation we must do two things; scrap BEE in its entirety, and get serious about an education policy that fits the next generation of job-seekers for today and tomorrow's market.

As it stands at the moment, the only thing we know with certainty is that unless we change, in ten years time we will be a further decade behind the World.

If I were the chief of ANC (African National Congress), I would think along the line of disbanding the party in its present form and regroup it taking all the important problems of the nation into account with the aim of solving them satisfactorily in a time-bound manner.

I've been to Southafrica and I think it is a great country and if Ms Zille and her Democratic alliance Party were to rule South Africa the country could improve and help the african continent but this is still outlying, sadlly....

Where is the confidence in the democratic process that is what changed South Africa in the first place and is in the process of changing South Africa at the moment.The DA is growing the ANC broad church is plitting Cosato is in the process of splitting.All that is needed is the EFF to get 10% of the vote come 2014, AGANG-SA 8%, DA to get near 30% of the vote and we end up with a new Government. There has been a fundemental ideological split that has occured, those who believe in nationalizing our mines, Banks, and land grabs, and those who do not.Those who believe in the free enterprise system and those who believe in Socialism.I still believe in South Africa.

The thing to accept is that South Africa is sliding ... but almost every major country is sliding or struggling with economic growth. The key is to make the best of it. Diversify, spread risk across many countries and be happy with what you can do and achieve within your time.